


And upon her forehead was a name written

by MissMaudlin



Category: Sleepy Hollow (TV)
Genre: Blood Magic, Dark fic, Multi, Out of Character, Spells & Enchantments, Witches
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-29
Updated: 2014-11-29
Packaged: 2018-02-27 09:54:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2688470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissMaudlin/pseuds/MissMaudlin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>You will find the Witness,</i> they told her. <i>You will find him and you will make him yours. This is your destiny, your purpose and your mission.</i></p><p>Dipping her hand into the bowl, the witch before her brings her hand to the girl’s forehead. Upon her face she draws a shape of a cross with the blood soaking her fingers. The girl feels the warmth of the blood trickle down her nose and across her cheeks like tears. The girl tries not to flinch.</p><p><i>For thou art marked,</i> the witch before her intones. <i>Thou art marked and thou art our only hope.</i> Grasping her chin in her palm, she feels the witch’s fingers bite into her cheeks. <i>Do you understand?</i></p><p>The girl hesitates a moment. The witch’s fingers bite deeper. The girl closes her eyes. <i>Yes, I understand.</i></p><p>(Katrina!Dark Fic)</p>
            </blockquote>





	And upon her forehead was a name written

4 And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication:

5 And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.

6 And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus: and when I saw her, I wondered with great admiration.

Revelation 17:4-6

* * *

 

 _You will find the Witness_ , they told her. _You will find him and you will make him yours. This is your destiny, your purpose and your mission._

Dipping her hand into the bowl, the witch before her brings her hand to the girl’s forehead. Upon her face she draws a shape of a cross with the blood soaking her fingers. The girl feels the warmth of the blood trickle down her nose and across her cheeks like tears. The girl tries not to flinch.

 _For thou art marked_ , the witch before her intones. _Thou art marked and thou art our only hope._ Grasping her chin in her palm, she feels the witch’s fingers bite into her cheeks. _Do you understand?_

The girl hesitates a moment. The witch’s fingers bite deeper. The girl closes her eyes. _Yes, I understand._

The witch lets her go and when the witch turns, the girl tries to wipe the blood from her chin. It smears across her hand and when she gazes in the mirror later, the shimmery light of the moon illuminating the outline of her body, she sees that her face is stained red from it—her face a mask of crimson and spilt life.

*

She waits for him and she watches for him. He is the Witness and the hope of her kind. She is to mold him into a protector for her coven, a being strong enough to protect her from the evil that encroaches with every passing day.

She scries for him the night before she meets him. Pouring the water, the surface of it shivering and rippling, she waits for the liquid to still before she opens herself up, waiting for him to appear before her. Moments pass before the water shivers and there he is before her, his face stern, his mouth downturned in anger.

She has waited for him since she was a young girl and tasked with this mission. Her coven proclaimed her as his protector, his guide to the beings that only he could see. She was linked to him, entwined in his fate, the moment they traced that cross on her forehead, marking her.

She gazes at his face for moments, hours it seems, watching as he moves about his home. He takes off his wig, sets it on a stand, and then runs his hands—his hands slender, the fingers long—through his close-cropped hair. She watches as he sighs, she watches as his valet pulls off his boots before he waves the servant away, she watches as he sits in a chair before the fire, drinking brandy, swirling the liquid around in the glass before taking one long swallow, finishing the liquor. His hands clench and unclench, over and over, and she almost lets the vision go before she sees him stand and throw the glass into the flames, the glass shattering and sparkling in the light.

She lets the vision go then. She knows what she must do.

*

 _Do you wonder about our children?_ he asks her one night.

The curtains swing in the slight breeze, the moonlight shining through the window onto their bed. She shifts, pulling the sheet closer to her chest. _How do you imagine them?_ she replies instead.

He sighs a little, his mind dancing off into the distance. He tends to daydream, her husband.

She doesn’t daydream. She hasn’t daydreamed since the day she met him, when she curled her hand about his wrist and whispered in his ear, _You are a good man, Ichabod Crane._ She felt him shiver then, his eyes closed, his heart beating fast, and then she let him go, knowing he’d find her again soon.

 _I imagine them as bright, and beautiful,_ he says dreamily. He curls up next to her, still speaking, his voice low, a pleasant rumble. _As enchanting as their mother._

She smiles sadly and places her hand on top of his. _Yes,_ she says in reply. _I imagine them like that as well._

*

The coven comes for her when she is a little girl not more than ten years of age.

A child of Quakers, her parents simple and straightforward, she knows nothing of witchcraft—except that it is evil. Sitting in the parlor of their small home, the girl stitches her sampler as her mother dandles one of her many siblings upon her knee. _You will make a good wife one day, Katrina_ , her mother says to her as the girl threads her needle and bends over her work, dutiful and quiet. _And I hope that you may be blessed with many children._

She murmurs _Yes, Mama._ She does not know what marriage really means. But she knows that when her parents want her to marry, she will do so without protest.

But that evening, as she walks outside to visit the newest litter of kittens in the barn, her mother admonishing her to return before it becomes dark, she sees movement at the edge of the woods. Standing very still, she waits; she assumes it’s a deer, coming out to graze before the sun sets. But this, she realizes, is no deer: a woman stands, dressed in gray, her robes touching the grass at her feet. She’s not beautiful, but her face holds a clarity that transfixes the girl.

And when this woman beckons, she follows her into the woods, unable to protest, unable to wonder where she’s taking her, or if she’ll ever come back home.

*

She grooms him. She shapes him. She whispers to him at night and tells him: _You are a good man, Ichabod Crane. You are a Witness. You will protect us as I protect you._

He gives up his red coat for her. He burns his wigs and lets his own hair grow until it is long, long and lanky like he is. He wears the clothes of a colonial, simple and plain. He weeps when he receives that last letter from his father, telling him that he is disowned, never to return to England, for he no longer has a son named Ichabod Crane. And when he lays his head on her lap, crying, she strokes his hair and wonders if she can toy with a man’s life like this without causing her own destruction.

But her coven expects nothing less of her. She is the one who will create the Witness. This Witness will protect her kind from His wrath. And so she has ensorcelled him to her will, until such time that he all may be revealed to him, when the decisions she makes for him become enmeshed with what he believes were his own choices.

She turns him from England so they may marry, for as his wife she has access to his mind, to his thoughts, to his body. And it’s on a warm, autumn morning that they meet at the small church nestled in a valley, with only two others and the reverend to witness their union. Ichabod’s love for her shines in his bright blue eyes as he recites his vows. His gaze is so warm, so comforting, so full of love, that she can almost believe it’s real.

*

The coven, they teach her to harness her powers. They teach her to scry, to become one with the energies of the earth, to read the stars, to cast spells. They show her images of the past, the present and the future. They mark her with blood and claim her as their own. And they return her to her parents, as if only minutes have passed instead of days and weeks and months. Time smears like ink on a page. She only knows that she must not tell anyone what she sees or hears or learns.

She grows into a young woman. And as she grows, her powers grow. The coven whispers that she will be the strongest witch of their age, the strongest witch in centuries. Her power gleams from her fingertips, from her dark, blood red hair that shines in the moonlight, from the tilt of her smile.

The power she feels coursing through her veins travels through her limbs and surrounds her heart and her lungs and she adores it. It is, she knows, the only thing of her life that truly matters to her now. She scries in pools of water behind the barn, in the bowl upon her dresser; she practices spells under her breath as she sews with her mother; she cuts herself with a shard of glass only to heal the cut within moments.

Her mother sees her daughter acting so strangely and tries to make her behave. She makes her watch the younger children more often; she has her recite Psalms until her voice is hoarse; she stands over her as she kneads bread for supper, her hand hard on her daughter’s shoulder, pressing tighter and tighter.

It is when she is an adolescent that she sees Him for the first time. She scries one morning, gazing into a pool of rainwater that she discovered in the woods. She knows she only has an hour to spare before her parents will start looking for her. And it is there that she sees not only her reflection in the water but another’s: a white beast with curling horns, his face distorted yet she knows that it is beautifully grotesque. Terror bursts through her body but she remains immobilized by the image.

 _Katrina, Witch of the Coven of the Sacred Heart_ , the Beast intones. His voice makes her bow her head, pain from its sound ratcheting through her ears. _I have watched you, and I will wait for you. For I vow that you will be my servant in death._

And then the image of the Beast disappears, shimmering away across the water. The girl gasps and sobs for breath, overcome with terror.

*

The Beast comes to her in her dreams, in her scrying, when she gazes into her mirror as she brushes her hair at night. And He simply says the same words: _For I vow that you will be my servant in death.  
_

She can never see His face. It blurs and it moves as if it were water. But all she knows is the absolute horror of these visions, these dreams where she awakens, gasping and sobbing, awakening her sister in bed next to her. And she begs her sister: _Do not tell Mama. Please._ And her sister simply shakes her head and says, _I won’t, Katrina. I promise._

She tells the coven of her visions. They instruct her to wear an amulet to protect herself from Him. And so she does, and when she awakens the next morning without having seen Him, she weeps from sheer joy.

*

When Ichabod leaves for another mission—as he kisses her, his lips gentle and soft, his voice luxurious in her ear—she sees Him again.

She and Ichabod have been married for one year now. He kisses her on the forehead every morning to awaken her, as he wakes with the sunrise. _Awaken, sleeping beauty_ , he says and she always stifles a smile as she opens her eyes. She strokes her fingers across his face and says in reply, _I am awake now, sweet prince._

During the day, she mends his clothes, takes tea with friends, instructs the cook and the maid on their duties. She wanders about their tidy home and sees impressions of Ichabod everywhere: stockings tossed onto a chair in their bedroom; books scattered across his desk in the tiny library; cigarillos in an ash tray next to the chair before the parlor fire; tracts of the Colonies’ bid for independence; and his own letters, written in that beautiful yet hurried script, looping and slanted. She traces a finger across one of the letters sitting on his desk, unfinished, as she often finds them. Ichabod will sit to write a letter, scratching his quill across the parchment, but then suddenly stand, stretch his body and flex his fingers, oftentimes muttering to himself. And then he finds himself distracted in some other capacity and the letter is left to be finished for another day.

But the nights are for them. She reads to him as they sit in the parlor, and it is then that he is quiet, his attention rapt on her face. She reads _Gulliver’s Travels_ the most, as it is their favorite. He laughs at her voice acting, remarking later that she should tread the boards, she is such a fine actress.

And as they lie in bed, his arm around her, his breathing deep and even, she wonders at the irony of his words.

But today: he has left her again and she finds herself alone as she braids her hair to go to bed. A single candle flickers next to her as she ties the ribbon at the end, and when she looks up she sees Him. She can only give a strangled gasp as He envelops her in the vision, her spiritual body taken to a dark forest.

He stands over her, His face somehow clearer this time. His voice echoes through her body and she trembles. _You hid yourself from me for many years, Katrina,_ He says. _But no longer. For I have proclaimed that you will be my servant in death. It is time._

He reaches for her and she mutters a spell that blasts Him with a touch of power. Enough that she is able to scramble away and run. But this is His domain: and suddenly He is before her again, reaching for her.

 _I can make you even more powerful. I will make you my queen_ , He says, and she can only stand and listen now, her body immobilized. _Be my queen, Katrina, and together we shall rule this earth._

And then she finds herself back in her bedroom, the candle blown out, and the wind rushing through the room, whistling with a high-pitched frequency that settles into her bones.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic bears some explanation, I think (since when do I write Ichatrina fics? Ha). Mostly this has come from my own frustration with Katrina's character (or lack thereof) throughout both seasons, and lately, I've been obsessed with Katrina as the Whore of Babylon from Revelation. I realize that this fic is rather OOC, but I argue that the show has given us so little about Katrina that really, it's not OOC because what character does she have?
> 
> Anyway, this is obviously TBC. The rating is high because it'll get darker with the next chapter, so might as well rate it M now. Thanks for reading~


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